Back of the House/Episode 7: Berkshire Pork with Amanda Freitag!

In the latest episode of Back of the House, Ariane & Chef Amanda Freitag are laughing it up in The Brooklyn Kitchen while they prepare two of their favorite recipes for Berkshire pork.

Berkshire pork is known for its juicy, flavorful meat which is heavily marbled. Sometimes known as kurobuta, (which is Japanese for “black pork”) Berkshire is highly sought-after by chefs and home gourmands alike for its sweet, nutty flavor and fork-tender texture.

We source our Berkshire pork from a cooperative in Missouri, at the foot of the Ozark Mountains. About a dozen family farmers raise Berkshire and cross breeds (referred to as simply “heritage”) on pasture, with access to individual houses, water and supplemental grain feed. Families of pigs are left together, to forage and frolic outdoors in pasture. The cooperative is strict about banning the use of antibiotics and hormones on each farm, and about limiting the number of hogs the farms raise. They seek to add another farmer to the cooperative before they add more pigs to any one farm. They are paid a premium for their humanely-raised pork, making the small farm a profitable business, and proving that there might be a future in the old breeds after all.